This weekend, East European Bible College is full of life as leaders from seventeen churches across Romania and Ukraine gather for our third annual Praxis Conference. Each one has come ready to grow, connect, and return home better equipped to serve.
My phone showed me a photo from 2014 this week—and I couldn’t stop thinking about the stories behind it.
It’s just a simple group picture, but every person in it represents a piece of what God has been building over the years.
Allyssa was the only girl in the group back then. Since that day, she met Razvan, got married, and now they’re raising three kids while serving…
Years ago, we set out to do something simple in Romania.
We wanted to train Roma men from small villages to lead churches in their own communities. The goal was straightforward: equip local leaders so the church could grow from within.
But we quickly ran into a challenge.
Can I tell you about someone I met in a small Romanian village?
Her name was Domnica. Whenever our volunteers gathered with the kids, she was almost always nearby. Not in the middle of things—just quietly watching from the edges. You could tell life hadn’t been easy for her. Poverty had left its marks. But she always had this warm, steady smile.
One day we decided to stop and talk with her...
As we celebrate thirty years of Remember the Children in Romania, I’ve been thinking about how this journey has shaped both the ministry — and me.
My earliest memories there are not easy ones. They’re marked by the lingering weight of communism, by hardship, and by the quiet tragedy so many children endured. For many Romanians, those scars are still close to the surface.
What I remember most clearly, though, are the children on the streets — and sometimes beneath them, living in the sewers.
One of them was a boy named Florin.
Our latest project⏤10 homes for orphans in Tanzania⏤has been an exciting process. Thanks to your generous support, 4 homes have been fully built and we are currently building 4 more. Only 2 to go!
But what does the process of building these homes look like? How are they being built? And why are we doing it in the first place?
It was about seven years ago that I stopped by Daniel Bagosi’s new home to have coffee with him. During our conversation that morning, he told me about some of the children in the community that had been knocking on his door asking for food. He was deeply troubled by this as it was all too frequent, and he asked me if I would go with him to visit the community where these children lived.
This week, Andy had a Zoom call with Natalie Barentson. She oversees online communications, such as our website and Sunday Stories emails! She first became involved with RtC in 2014 when she was a student at William Jessup University. She is especially passionate about child sponsorship, as she has been a sponsor herself!
